Enjoy this post and share with your friends!
AN URGENT EMAIL FROM MY BOOK EDITOR arrived last Thursday. She was to be entertaining friends over the weekend in the upper reaches of Vermont, where it’s been unusually hot. “I have company coming! Should I make Coconut Cream Pie, Bill Neal Atlantic Beach Pie, Johnetta Miller’s Lemon Icebox? X$%&…it’s 90 degrees here! xxx.’’ Her SOS was nothing new to those of us raised in the South. We have survived summer without air conditioning but only with lemon icebox pie. I remember my mother pressing crushed graham crackers and melted butter into an aluminum ice cube tray where she’d removed the inserts that made the cubes, then poured in a lemony filling which set up once the tray was returned to the freezer. It was such a genius dessert, really, back in those days when no one worried about eating pies with uncooked eggs. And it stayed in the freezer for days for us to grab a slice. If we were lucky, there was softly whipped cream in the fridge to plop on top. Southern summer pies quench and soothe in this heat and rest in the fridge until ready to serve. And you don’t have to live in the South to appreciate them.
At first I thought about telling my editor to just bake a pound cake.It goes so well with summer fruits and berries. You can toast slices for breakfast the next day and leave it on the counter for your guests to come and grab a slice when they’re hungry. But truthfully, pound cake in a summer kitchen has always been an oxymoron. Why do we heat up an oven, which heats up the house, to bake a cake for an hour when it’s nearly 100 degrees outside? I once lived in a small brick bungalow in Atlanta with a tiny kitchen and a giant gas stove I purchased at a restaurant’s going-out-of-business sale. The gas line to this stove was a lot larger than you normally find in a residential stove, and for fire codes, the plumber attached a fiberglass board to the wall as insulation behind the stove. In the wintertime, the stove warmed my house. But in the summertime, the pilot lights alone made my small abode sweltering. I dripped with perspiration just to walk through the kitchen out the back door. So when I needed to bake and ramp up that great beast of an oven, I did so at night after the sun had set. I opened the back door to let in a faint breeze through the screen. The butter for the pound cake took no time to soften, the eggs beat up nicely one by one because they, too, had quickly lost of the chill of the fridge, and the motion of the mixer’s beaters, picking up those yolks and whites and whirling them around the bowl created a lush, thick batter ready for vanilla, salt, and flour. And then the cake went into the mighty oven.
Pound cake in the summertime is both ritual and torture.It’s like hearing the news of the day. Right now, America is one hot kitchen. Our tempers are short, folks are hungry, and no matter how much we try to forget the madness, rising inflation, the tawdry Epstein files, dire hunger in Gaza, the burning of Kyiv, we just can’t. I was driving home from a family vacation last week and listened to an NPR interview about gathering with people close to you and how it recharges relationships and nourishes our souls. I believe that. I had just spent hours on a screened porch swing, took long walks, and played board games after dinner with family and friends. We tossed big pasta salads with summer squash and basil, sliced garden tomatoes alongside burrata, baked peach cobbler and oatmeal cookies, doused smoked chicken with Alabama white sauce, and boiled shrimp and super-fresh corn. The meals were communal, and the cooking collaborative. Instead of feeling depleted after one of these getaways, I felt refreshed. But it didn’t take long to return to reality when I listened to the news. Is this the America I want for our children and grandchildren, I asked myself. Or do I want to go back to the top of that mountain and have nothing on the agenda but lunch and a game of cards? I can’t help but think we’ll get through this by cooking and caring about each other, yes, but also by resisting and saying “no.” We cannot plant our heads in the sand and pretend this is not happening. How are you coping?
My editor friend reminded me that she wanted a pie recommendation. So I told her lemon icebox was the way to go. It was an old Southern recipe that possibly originated in Louisiana and the rest of the Deep South because down here summer lasts all year. And recipes that stand the test of time are ones you can count on. They might have come from the back of the Eagle Brand can, which is the case of Johnetta Miller’s lemon pie. Johnetta Solomon Miller was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on lemon icebox pie. And so after she moved west and joined Denver’s Campbell Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (which her son Adrian Miller has jokingly said stands for ‘’always meet and eat’’), this sweet confection of tangy lemon filling on top of crushed vanilla wafers was what she made for church potlucks and whenever people came together to share food. It was ‘’something my mother made for holidays throughout the year, not just the summer ones,” Adrian Miller said. “It was the one dessert we kids coveted.’’ I told my editor to slather this pie with meringue or forgo that and smooth whipped cream from edge to edge. Either way, stash it in the fridge until company comes. And serve it cold.
Summer desserts are all about cooling off, stepping back in time, and sharing slices with each other. In spite of the hot kitchen, I will be baking three pound cakes to freeze and drive to Sharon, CT, to take part in this Page to Plate event at the Hotchkiss Library in Sharon, CT on August 2. Come see me in Connecticut! And keep cool! - xo, Anne
THE RECIPE: Johnetta Miller’s Lemon Icebox PieOriginally a 1930s French Creole recipe that came out of New Orleans and made its way up into the Delta of Mississippi and through Alabama and into Tennessee and other parts of the South, this was the pie once there was refrigeration. And that pie would travel to Denver, which is where Adrian Miller’s mother baked it for her church gatherings. I loved Johnetta Miller’s simple recipe, and I made a couple of adaptations, adding another egg and placing the pie in the oven to bake a bit so you don’t have to worry about raw eggs. Makes 8 servings Prep & Cook: 30 to 35 minutes Bake: 20 to 27 minutes for crust and meringue Chill: At least 4 hours
You’re on the free list for Anne Byrn: Between the Layers. If you’re liking what you’re reading, why don’t you become a paying subscriber for more recipes, stories, and content.
|
0 comments:
Post a Comment